With the goal of developing a more capable alternative, a team of researchers has turned to a machine it calls the Odoreader, which is designed to analyze urine samples to provide a non-invasive prostate cancer test.

The new research is a collaboration between the University of Liverpool and the University of the West of England in Bristol. It focuses on a device called the Odoreader, which was used back in 2013 to detect bladder cancer by analyzing the odors in urine, with a 100 percent success rate.

The researchers believe that the device could significantly improve prostate cancer diagnostics, by offering a non-invasive test that's potentially much more accurate than existing methods. The machine, which is described as being " like an electronic nose," uses a gas chromatography sensor combined with specially developed algorithms to detect whether a patient has cancer from a single urine sample.